Talk:Robert Geffrye

Geffrye as "slave-trader"
I'm sure there's a line of style guide for this, but what are the criteria for calling someone a "slave-trader"? Sources say things about Robert Geffrye having "made part of his wealth from slavery" and "invested in the forced labour and the trading of enslaved Africans, and part-owned a slave ship called the China Merchant". Is that sufficient to use the term "slave-trader" without further context?

Pinging User:TSP, who added the term to Museum of the Home to "line up Geffrye description with his own article", but this article only had the term added by an IP relatively recently: originally in June changing "eminent East India merchant" to "eminent East India merchant and slave trader", and added to another paragraph this month ago with an edit summary of "make it clearer that trading slaves was the primary way that he made his money" - neither claim is directly sourced (that he was "eminent" in this field, or made the majority of his money from it), though, and both sound like exaggerations of what the sources I can find seem to actually say. --Lord Belbury (talk) 12:05, 29 August 2020 (UTC)


 * As ever, we should follow the sources. The BBC seems to have formerly referred to Geffrye as a slave trader in their headline, but now to have amended it.
 * My main thinking with the amendment in the Museum of the Home article was that it seemed odd to give a biography of Geffrye at the start of the article; then slip in that extra detail in a sort of "Oh, we forgot to mention...." way when recording the controversy over his statue; but obviously we should only use the phrase "slave trader" if sources do. TSP (talk) 23:18, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Had been added in, so removed it.  ♥ L'Origine du monde ♥  ♥ Talk ♥ 17:24, 26 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Reliable source here says he was a slave trader and that he "...made his fortune in the slave trade". Little grape (talk) 21:31, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
 * WP:RSP suggests no consensus on how reliable the Evening Standard is, and "made his fortune in the slave trade" may be an overblown tabloid introduction if everywhere else is saying he made "part" of his fortune this way. It's certainly a gap in this article that we can't say how much of his money came from slave trading (was it really, as the lead now implies, second to him being a merchant but a bigger part of his work than being Mayor?), and it would be good to include that if we draw from stronger sources than how an Evening Standard journalist chose to open an article once. --Lord Belbury (talk) 22:20, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
 * '...it is generally considered more reliable than most British tabloids and middle-market newspapers'. And certainly outranks the museum's own account of Geffrey's involvement given here. Little grape (talk) 00:47, 19 January 2022 (UTC)